Ultimate Jet #73 - Phenom 300E Flight Test

«Go tell Saint-Exupery»
Hemingway was a tough sell. He grunted a lot, almost fell of his stool
and the bottle wasn’t even finished. I explained the new 300E uses
only 3209 feet for takeoff. It has a maximum payload of 2636 lbs and
a payload of 1587 lbs with full fuel. I told him the plane is so much
more comfortable than anything he could dream of. The pilots have
40% more seat track room to unwind their legs. He said flying is not
his thing and that maybe I should go drinking with de St-Exupery
instead. I steered the conversation towards comfort and explained
the new 300E is much quieter. I told him they redesigned the thermal
acoustic insulation package, they eliminated the metallic flapper
noise during the descent and approach phases and added a muffler
into the vapor cycle machine to make the air conditioning quieter.
The new Bossa Nova interior is less plush and more Teutonic-looking
and considerably more comfortable. The ceiling is studiously free
of any protrusions and designed with ease of operations and style.
There are three layouts possible and that should cover anyone’s taste
in interior floor-plans.
Hemingway grunted something but I could feel he was interested
while feigning not being interested. I felt I was making progress
because Hemingway hadn’t punched me.
User-friendly systems
The avionics have also been improved. The Garmin system is harder
to describe than to use. A four-year old can use it. Unfortunately,
there were no four-year olds around when I needed one but I was able
to figure it out anyway confirming my wife’s claim that I am actually
four years old. This system has clearly been designed by engineers
smart enough to think like regular people unlike most systems which
appear to be designed by engineers who had to be communicating
with each other in Morse code. Their manuals appear to be translated
from English to Japanese back to English with a detour in Spanish
spoken as a second language by a Swede with poor eyesight. Add a
few figures and some numbers Einstein couldn’t figure out and you
have a typical manual.
There is now a good Emergency Descent Mode though I still can’t
figure out why it doesn’t draw more information from the FMS system
and adjust its descent altitude to a safe altitude in its geographic
quadrant instead of an arbitrary 15,000 feet. Granted, you’d have to
be having a very bad day to have an emergency depressurization in
an area with mountains above 15,000 feet except it’s clear you are
obviously already having a very bad day if you just had an emergency
depressurization.... There is predictive wind-shear alert, vertical
navigation for non-precision approaches and a lot of other useful
goodies built into the system. I like how user-friendly the whole
package is. Hemingway didn’t say a thing and asked for, grunted
really, a second bottle. Things were looking up I thought and I didn’t
get punched. Not yet at least.
Ultimate Jet I 25